Grammar Grumbling

I’ve come to think of the place Kohric and I go over things as the “teaching place.” I feel like I’ve been at the teaching place forever, even though it's only been three days. The teaching place has become a comfortable, relatively safe haven in an environment where so much is completely unknown and alien.



Kohric is wonderful. I still don’t entirely know what his function in the clan is. He refers to himself as “thanda-tu D’Keda.” The others seem to give him respect. Their greetings to him tend to be the formal, head-bobbing kind more than the simple hand gestures. I take it he’s kind of the guy who makes sure the youngsters have enough general knowledge to make it.

That description kinda makes him sound like a bit of a dry, boring dude. But that’s really not true. He has this odd, random wit that comes out of nowhere. Like, this afternoon when I was getting really frustrated, he decided to suddenly teach me the word for “fart”. So, while I’m still struggling with their goddamn freakish grammar, I can at least tell someone it wasn’t me playing the buttock bassoon.

Oh, their grammar. I’m picking up decent amounts of vocabulary. It’s fairly simple to memorize words. It takes a lot of practice, but not really that difficult. Grammar, though, that’s basically the way your brain processes those words. And damn, if that’s not a LOT harder to grasp. I have to slowly dissect each sentence and translate it back into English in my mind right now. I despair of ever becoming fluent.

Really, I’m spoiled by Latin based languages. They have funky grammar here and there, but it really isn’t all that different from English. Take French. In English, you say “I would like the fruit.” In French it’s “Je voudrais le fruit.” It’s basically the same sentence, just with different words. “I” is still in the same place, for example. “Would like” is mashed into “voudrais” but it’s pretty much the same thing.

In Azu-nah, “I would like the fruit,” would be “edusai-doku kayo,” which, in English, is “want-me fruit.” They have a word for “the” but they don’t use it much. And verbs seem to attach themselves to nouns. Learning which verbs attach to what nouns is giving me a headache. “I want the fruit” isn’t too bad. I’d get it if they were all like that. But then you think about saying “He said she wanted the fruit to give to her brother.”

My head still hurts from today’s lessons.

Kohric turned me loose as the sun was beginning to dip so I could find something to eat and rest my aching brain. The Azu-nah tend to take their major meal in the afternoon, and they take it more or less as a group. Or, really, those who went out hunting and gathering over the day bring their finds to a circle of small fire pits. And then everyone else joins them to divvy out the food. Kohric must have said something about my meat issue, because it’s become a bit of a game for the gathered Azu to try and be the first to find something for me to eat.

Ikaylay from the terrible trio “won” tonight, and pranced up to me with a round, gray colored tuber called “heksanan.” It looks like a potato pretending to be a rock, but the inside is porous and squishy. It’s eerily reminiscent of bread. But it tastes a bit sweet, like a carrot or corn. Heksanan it is. I couldn’t classify this thing if I tried.

“Teegaahn, hai?” Ikaylay said, gesturing toward me. He pointed to himself, “Ikaylay,” then to me “Teegaahn?”

“Hai. Oki-kaibo Tee.” I said.

Ikaylay suddenly gap grinned, and gestured excitedly to his two cohorts. Sodo and Nohwasi crowded near and listened as Ikaylay chattered at them. “Oki-kaibo Tee!” he kept repeating. The others were grinning by now too, and muttering “Oki-tee Tee!”

Kohric, always relatively nearby to rescue me from a Lost in Translation, padded up behind me and gestured. He held his forepaw near the ground. “Kas” he said. Then he sat back on his haunches and reached as high as he could, “Tee.”

Oh for the love of crap. I’m officially a pun! “Tee” is their word for “tall.” And since I’m a good half meter taller than any of them, they find this discovery utterly hilarious. The Trio spent the rest of the meal calling me “Tee-Tee” and saying to their neighbors “Oki-tee Tee!” I have a feeling it’s going to be a while before this one goes away.

Oh well. At least Tee isn’t Azu for fart!

Azu-nah a la carte

Thanda-tu, I learned, means “teacher.” Or, really it’s more like “one who teaches. The thanda bit is their word for teach, and the “tu” changes it to a noun. This type of grammar is going to take a lot of getting used to.

Kohric is a really good teacher. I’ve said it before, but he really is good. He’s very patient and deliberate. He’s absorbed a surprising amount of English vocabulary, which is making things a hell of a lot easier. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After my altercation with my inquisitive houseguests, Kohric lead me off to a quiet, sandy spot with a few big, rounded boulders strewn about. Kohric had brought the little red language tutor the First Contact crew had left with D’Keda. Between that, my computer pad, and simple sand drawings, we actually had a decent arsenal of tools.

We spent most of the day there. My head hurts from all the intensive cramming, but I think it’s worth it. We started off with general vocabulary. A LOT of vocabulary. I can’t remember every word we went over today perfectly. I’m no Rain Man. But I’m getting better. I know with practice I’ll have a halfway decent word bank.

Kohric insisted I teach him the English version of every Azu-nah word he went over. I don’t know whether he wants to learn it to make teaching me easier, to give the Azu-nah more equal footing with humans, or whether it’s just to satisfy his own curiosity. Either way, it broke up the lessons a bit, and gave my brain a chance to rest. Kohric is picking up English faster than I’m picking up Azu-nah. But then again he’s cheating. He’s had that LangTutor for two years!

I mostly picked up nouns. Stuff like tree, rock, grass, hand, foot, mouth, eyes, tail. The proper word for the tree tents is “kirrrrt’ok” Yeah, it’s a weird, weird word. Sounds like someone dropped a quarter. You know how some human languages have rolling R’s? Well, the Azu-nah apparently wanted to one-up us. They have the regular R-sound, but they also have one that’s… well… a freakin’ mini-growl. It’s hard to describe. The closest is a cat. Ever have a cat? And when she’s hungry she follows you around making you crazy and going prrrrt? Prrrt? Prrrt? It’s almost like that. The rolling part is guttural, formed in the throat instead of with the tongue. And it ends with an abrupt, almost projected T-sound.

It wouldn’t be so bad if that was the only funky sound they incorporated. But there’s also an extended S-sound that’s a second cousin to a hiss, and they have a chirpy, high pitch sound that I despair of ever managing. Take the sound “khee,” try to make the sound back in your throat instead of near your teeth, and hike the pitch way up. It sounds a lot better in an Azu-nah throat. A bit bird-like, really. I sound like a gorilla on helium.

I eventually started losing my voice a little from the strain and Kohric decided we were done for the day. I took this opportunity to try and explain my food problem to him.

It. Took. Forever.

I drew pictures; little stick figure Azu-nah and humans, each on their own sphere to try to explain the two different worlds, pictures of food, pictures of hunters, of meat and gathered things. I drew a human eating on the human sphere, looking happy, and a second on the Azu-nah sphere lying on its side after eating food. Then I mimed it all. I went through a half dozen different motions for eating and then becoming ill or vomiting. Kohric kept staring at me intently, and after an eternity he held up the LangTutor. “Poison,” the robotic voice repeated, and the image showed a rat eating something and then falling over. The Azu-nah word is eskthi, by the way.

Things went smoother after that breakthrough. “Is food poison to me? I must learn,” I said simply. Kohric seemed excited to finally understand the point behind my idiot antics.

“We learn how?” he asked.

Dammit. I didn’t know the Azu word for “test.” I looked around in frustration and finally grabbed my computer pad. This wasn’t quite accurate, but it was close enough. “Computer will eat first,” I said, pointing to the pad. Kohric didn’t look impressed. He was probably doubting my pad’s ability to suddenly grow teeth and chow down on a steak or something. I don’t blame him for being skeptical. But he seemed to understand the basic idea.

He told me to wait and ran off. He came back almost half an hour later, balancing a saddle-like basket across his back with his tail. Inside was a small pile of finger-sized bits of different foods; pieces of fruit, tuber pieces, strips of dried meat, and a couple small chunks of fresh meat. There were leaf-looking things, stuff that seemed half nut, half bean, and several small stalk-like things that vaguely resembled pre-harvest grain grass.

I thanked Kohric over and over, both in Azu and English. He seemed pleased and watched intently as I scraped and stabbed probes from my kit into each piece. He soon recognized the chime my pad made when the analysis completed, and would ask “good?” immediately. When I’d answer “no” he’d take the offending sample and eat it. It was cute. It was almost as if he was trying to get the offending bit out of the way so it wouldn’t upset me.

I’m not entirely happy with the results.

Seems while I’m on Minerva I’m going to have to be a pretty strict vegetarian. Which is odd, because I honestly didn’t expect that. I figured the plants would be full of funky chemicals and freakish indigestible cellulose. But they’re actually mostly simple sugars, fats, and even protein in a couple of those nut-bean thingies. The meat, though. Ugh. If it isn’t full of indigestible, freakishly folded proteins, it’s so thick with the native Minervan toxins that I’d drop like a shot duck after a couple bites. I’d have to blow through several days worth of anti-toxin just to get through a meal, assuming all that chemical warfare didn’t just make my circulatory system melt or something.

So, I guess chestha steak is off the menu. Ah well. Freaky six-legged buggers looked gamey anyway.

Don't eat the biofoam

I woke up this morning to the sound of animal calls; long, low, whooping sounds in the distance. Nearer, I could hear the rustling of leaves, as if something were hopping amongst the branches of my tree. That creeped me out a bit. For all I know Minerva has squirrels too, only these are venomous and eat brains or something.

I got up, pulled on my clothes and opened the tent flap, scanning the branches in front of me and below.

Nothing.

A leaf drifted down in front of me and I glanced up.



Without thinking I flung myself backward into the tent, reaching for my survival knife and swearing enough to strip paint. When the rest of my cerebrum caught up with my base instincts, and my heart was only marginally close to a blowout, I peeked my head back out of the tent.

There were three of them now, all appeared to be male. The one who’d been in the branch above was now clinging like a monkey to the limb my tree tent straddled. The second was lazing across another branch like a rust-colored panther, yellow eyes watching my every move. The third, blue, white and black, was gap-grinning down at me from the same branch his yellow friend had just abandoned.

“You guys scared the bajeezus out of me,” I blurted. The three stared blankly at me for a moment. Then the yellow one bobbed his head and raised his palms for a second in the informal version of Azu-nah greeting. He pointed to himself and said “Ikaylay,” then to the rusty one (“Sodo”), then the blue and black (“Nohwasi”). I figured those were their names. Then Ikaylay said the phrase Kohric had taught me the previous day, asking permission to come into my personal space.

I was so excited to apply some of my knowledge that I didn’t even stop to consider. I did the head-bob bow and repeated his greeting gesture.

I was suddenly surrounded by flowing, twisting Azu-nah. The three all seemed to want to examine my tree tent at once. Only two of them could cram in at a time, and that was with their tails hanging out the door and in my face. The third, Sodo, busied himself by poking my ears, sniffing my hair, and seemed to be utterly baffled by my toes.

I tolerated it for a bit until I realized the crunching sound I was hearing was them eating my rations. It took a lot of shouting, gesturing, gentle shoves, and even a bit of a tug on the blue one’s tail before I got them out of my tree tent. They’d slobbered all over my binoculars and my multi-tool. Half, HALF of my rations were devoured (how the hell can anything eat that fast?!), and one of them wouldn’t let go of the biofoam tank from my first aid kit.

It was the blue one, Nohwasi, and he kept turning the tank around, examining it with quick, jerky head movements, almost like a bird. I gestured to him in a “come” motion and mimed him giving up the tank. Ignored me and began chewing on the nozzle.

“No, don’t do tha---“

Schhhlllllrrrp!



It was difficult not to laugh at the expression on his face. He looked looked like he’d utterly failed at shaving. But I was more concerned that he would try to eat the biofoam. I mimed spitting, waving my hands urgently. He seemed to get the idea. Poor guy. I’m pretty sure that stuff tastes like crap.

I rescued my biofoam tank just about the time when Kohric came to my rescue. He took one look at the carnage around my tree tent and shoo-ed the trio off with several sharp, barked words. Other than Nohwasi, who was busy scraping biofoam residue off his tongue with a claw, they didn’t seem very apologetic.

So, that was my lesson for the morning. When someone asks permission to touch your stuff, they really mean it. Though, Kohric's reaction makes me hope they were a bit over the top. But at least they were entertaining!

Now, today's goal is to try and articulate to Kohric that I need to test some Azu-nah food before I can eat it. I mimed talking with my hands and asked “Teach?” Kohric gape grinned and gestured for me to follow him.

“Come. Kohric is thanda-tu. Kohric will teach words.”